[ExI] Oil will never run out

[Bryan Bishop]

On Sunday 29 June 2008, Kevin Freels wrote:
> The technology necessary for singularity isn't going to be made by
> some guy in a cave.

Excuse me, but where do you think we started if not in a cave? So how is 
everything else after that not by the same tech, to some extent also 
manufactured from within a cave anyway? Okay, so we moved ten meters 
outside the mouth of the cave, so what? You can walk that in a couple 
of seconds.

> It requires extremely high technology - far

What shock level are you?

> beyond what is capable of now.

I'd like to point out that exponential growth is already a reality, and 
while there might be a great number of dependencies in the engineering 
of programmable systems of that sort, it's not as far as you think.

> Technology requires industry.

Don't know what you mean by this. Arguably, biology is technology. And 
biology came before human industry.

> Industry requires economies.

Certainly, look at ecosystems, but it's not the same thing as money.

> Economies require stability.

Stability is good stuff, yes. 

> Without stable growing economies you get no advancing industry and no
> advancing technology.

In the sense of ecologies of support I'd have to agree, but still don't 
see the monetary/financial basis, which is what I was commenting on in 
the first place, nothing about stability in relationships between 
agents and other actors in the systems, which again I agree with.

> A cell phone without civilization is just a paper weight.  

That's not true ... just throw up some towers/antennaes, a few 
electrical generators and also some distribution equipment. you can 
make a rudimentary hydrodynamic power generator with wires (or less 
optimally other shapes) of magnetic materials wrapped around other 
conductive metals basically, etc. etc.

- Bryan
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